A few months ago, I reported having to remove my Guest Book from my site due to excessive spam. It appears that people were using the book to advertise their pay-per-click websites selling everything from Viagra to Las Vegas trips.

So I logged in to my CityMax account, and clicked, "Hide" for that page, so it would no longer appear on the sidebar of my website. Figured that after a few weeks, when regular spammers couldn't find the page, they'd give up and stop trying to post stuff there. At which point I would re-install it. Good plan, huh?

Well, I went to re-install it today. And silly me, I didn't realize that simply "hiding" the page doesn't mean the page itself could no longer be accessed. Meaning that any legitimate browser to my website would NOT be able to find the page, being that it was no longer showing in the sidebar, but anyone who already had the URL could still see it! FURTHER meaning that the spam continued while I was in ignorant bliss for two months. The only difference now is that they paid attention to the warning at the top of the page to write something valid in your post, so now many of the messages begin with a bogus greeting about how much they like my site (as if they even actually looked at it).

When I went to look at the site today, I found over 200 spam messages, including one with over 320 lines of URLs to sites of all subjects imaginable. (Because when I am shopping for gemstone-related products, I am eager to find new sites on Natalie Portman and maternity bridesmaids dresses.) It's unbelievable. I started to remove some of them, before realizing the sheer volume of the spam messages. I realized it might be less time-consuming to simply transfer the VALID messages over to a totally different page. I hate to lose the nicer messages, and I like the idea of a Guest Book, but if it means having to remove hundreds of spam messages, I might just eliminate the page altogether (and I DON'T mean just removing it from the sidebar!).

Here is something I have to wonder. Speaking for myself alone, if I happen to glance at a business's Guest Book, if I find a bunch of posts like this, I get disgusted and hit the back button. I had this attitude even before it happened to me. My question is, is there ANY legitimate browser of a business's Guest Book who sees these ads, goes, "Wow, I can get cheap Tramadol!" and goes to the site? Seriously? Do the people posting these messages truly believe that spamming random Guest Books across the web will get them more sales?

Anyway, go ahead and take a look at the most recent madness:
GUEST BOOK

If anyone has any ideas on how to stop this problem, please let me know!